Piazza dei Cavalieri
The square of the Knights of Saint Stephen, with Vasari’s painted palace, now the Scuola Normale, and the tower where Count Ugolino starved.
The square was the political heart of medieval Pisa. After Florence took the city, Cosimo I de’ Medici made it the seat of his new order of knights, the Knights of Saint Stephen, founded in 1561 to fight the pirates of the Mediterranean. Giorgio Vasari rebuilt the Palazzo della Carovana for them, its front covered in black and white sgraffito, and Cosimo’s statue stands in front of it.
Since 1810 the palace has housed the Scuola Normale Superiore, one of Italy’s most selective universities. The Palazzo dell’Orologio across the square takes in the old Torre della Muda, where Count Ugolino della Gherardesca was locked up with his sons and grandsons in 1289 and left to starve, as Dante tells in the Inferno. Visit it in 3D ›
More in Pisa
Leaning Tower of PisaThe cathedral’s bell tower, which started to lean before its third floor was finished and has leaned ever since, some four degrees today.
Duomo di PisaThe marble cathedral of 1064, paid for with the spoils of a raid on Palermo, the first great building of the Pisan Romanesque.
BaptisteryThe largest baptistery in Italy, round and domed, where a guard sings a few notes every half hour to let you hear its echo.
CamposantoThe marble cloister of a cemetery on the north side of the square, said to stand on earth brought back from Golgotha.
Santa Maria della SpinaA tiny Gothic church on the bank of the Arno, all pinnacles and statues, once home to a thorn from Christ’s crown.
Borgo StrettoPisa’s old shopping street under the arcades, from the Ponte di Mezzo north into the medieval town.
The LungarniThe streets along both banks of the Arno, lined with palazzi in ochre and pink, lit with thousands of candles every 16 June.
Ponte di MezzoThe middle bridge, where the city has crossed the Arno since Roman times, and where the north and the south of Pisa fight every June.
Logge di BanchiThe open loggia at the south end of the Ponte di Mezzo, built around 1605 for the silk and wool traders.
TuttomondoKeith Haring’s last big mural, painted in 1989 on the back wall of the convent of Sant’Antonio, near the station.
Gioco del PonteOn the last Saturday of June the north and the south of Pisa push a cart across the Ponte di Mezzo, after a parade in Renaissance costume.
CecinaA thin, golden flatbread of chickpea flour, water and olive oil, baked in a copper pan in a wood oven and eaten hot with pepper.